Yep, just like heroin, dental hygiene is one sick, crazy habit.

I wanted to be an actress, but he was adamant. He ranted on about having nine daughters like it was my fault. He claimed he had to educate us in order to send us out into the work force, and damn it, he’d swallowed the advice of our bastard family dentist, and decided I was going to dental hygiene school.

TEETH OR TELEVISION BY MARY KAY WULF 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 52

She told me so herself. Exact words. In all the time I knew her, Winnie McBride never stopped telling me. “Yep, just like heroin, dental hygiene is one sick, crazy habit, Jean.”

It had rained the day before so the sweater-weather air was clean. We sat outdoors at the makeshift café on the ground floor of the Beverly Hills Medical and Dental Building on the north side of Sunset Boulevard. I listened and nodded and listened some more. Winnie the Fool, that’s what I called her behind her back, wore magazine sunglasses, a tight T-shirt and hip-stitched skirt with nude fishnet Spanx that disappeared against her skinny pale …